


Musical Interlude

by Areiton



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, M/M, Magical Tattoos, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, Street Performer Stiles, Violinist Derek, YouTuber Stiles Stilinski, soul marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-14 21:32:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13016550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: You hear him before you see him.A classic Christmas melody with tiny flourishes and drawn out notes that make it stunning and unique and new. You wait impatiently near the back of too many people as the song closes and they clap and move along sluggishly, almost like they are waiting for more.A tiny smile ticks at the corner of your lips as you cut through the crowd, less dense now, and there.Now.You can see him now.





	Musical Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Christmas, @nonbinary-kurt-wagner! I hope you enjoy this fluffy soulmates fic.  
> And for your viewing pleasure—the soulmates tattoo.

 

[ ](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sOOciJ9WeC4/WkL4K0_HC4I/AAAAAAAADjQ/3h_hiMJ5GugBlMn_xdaqeT8KC6XaDy3ZACLcBGAs/s1600/artistic-male-violin-tattoo-ideas-on-upper-back.jpg)

 

 

You hear him before you see him.

It’s late enough that the subway is beginning to empty, but it’s still noisy, still crowded, and you want to snarl over the people pressed to familiar and close as they jostle out of the train and onto the subway platform.

You tighten your grip on the violin case, and tug your coat a little be tighter around you, and that’s when you hear it, the haunting strains of music floating through the noise and talk, through the shifting packages and the quick feet and the rapid phone conversations.

You hear it and you think you could listen to it every day, could listen to nothing but this, and be blissfully happy.

The mass of people leaving the train slow your progress, keep you from seeing, and it makes you smile, just a little, because you aren’t the only one who can hear the unspeakable beauty in those clear clean notes.

So you nudge your way out of the train before the doors close, and wait as the song plays out, a classic Christmas melody with tiny flourishes and drawn out notes that make it stunning and unique and new, wait impatiently near the back of too many people as the song closes and they clap and move along sluggishly, almost like they are waiting for more.

A tiny smile ticks at the corner of your lips as you cut through the crowd, less dense now, and there.

Now.

You can see him now.

Pale skin and moles scattered along his fine skin, pink chapped lips pulled into a wide smile, messy hair. Broad shoulders and a lithe body tapered into a neat waist, and long legs wrapped in skinny jeans.

And his hands, clutched around the neck of the violin and the end of his bow, resting lightly against his leg.

He grins at the people dropping change and giftcards and handful of singles into the violin case and you sigh a little.

You spent the evening performing with a world class orchestra, a familiar culmination to your year of concerts and shows, and this--this is where you want to be.

He lifts his hand, rubbing his shoulder, and you smile.

He always touches his soulmark when he’s thinking of you.

“One more?” you ask, and he whips around, lighting up with a wide smile.

~*~

When you were a child, you hated your mark. You were seven when it first appeared, and by then you already knew about them. The marks that appeared at birth, or when your soulmate was born. They develop slow, getting more detail and intricacies as the soulpair grow older. You used to look at your grandmother’s, a wolf caught in a dreamcatcher with a bed of stars that trailed down her arm and into her fingers, growing denser over the years, with tiny hidden meanings in it and wonder what yours would be like, what it would _mean._

Then you woke up in late April, a burning itch on your neck and Laura laughed and danced around it, the tiny violin outline there.

Your mother smiled placidly and three days later, you were in your first lesson and you _hated_ it.

~*~

“Can you keep up, sourwolf?” he asks, and you smirk at him, and open your case.

You’re pretty sure Deaton would kill you for taking the Stradivari out here, but this violin.

This one is yours.

This is the one you play on Christmas Eve, in memory of your father, who spent most of the eight years after your mark appeared crafting it for you.

It’s not a world-renowned instrument, and is only remarkable because you are the one playing it--but to you, crouched on a dirty platform with your soulmate’s eyes on you, it is priceless.

You raise an eyebrow as you settle the violin and touch the bow to it’s strings.

Stiles smiles, wide and mischievous and _plays_.

~*~

Your tattoo doesn’t change, not for years, and it doesn’t surprise you. They don’t change much before soulpairs meet--only drastic, life-altering things are marked in ink.

The first time you shift, running wild with your pack under the moon, it warms and stings, a sweet pain. Later, you look at it, the thin crescent moon wrapped around your colorless violin that has faded into something a little messy and abstract, and you wonder what your soulmate thinks of it.

You learn to like the violin. In a pack of werewolves, shoved between your overbearing older sister and demanding baby sister, the practice room was yours, your lessons a place of quiet solitude. You were _good_ at it, and you felt closer to your soulmate, when you held your violin, sat in your dusty studio alone.

That’s where you were, when you felt the burning itch in your back. You were fifteen and hadn’t felt it burn in eight years, and it seared through, painful and _wrong_ as you clenched your eyes shut and bit your lip against the pain of it.

There’s a heartline, when you look later, cutting through the violin, a shaky thing that goes flat too soon. You shift and run, and when you can no longer hear your sisters and your pack, you weep.

For the soulmate you do not know and the pain they are feeling that you cannot share or protect them from.

~*~

He plays Silent Night, which earns a tilt of your eyebrows, because this is Stiles and he has never been silent, not ever.

He grins in response, and kicks the tempo up, hips swaying a little as he loses himself in the song, and you watch him.

You’re drawing a crowd--you always draw one, when you play together.

Derek Hale of the New York Philharmonic does not play with street performers, not even ones like Stiles Stilinski, street performer cum YouTube darling.

Except.

You do. Because since that first night that you stumbled over his videos, his smile grainy and bright, his music fucking _brilliant_ , you haven’t been able to get him out of your head.

Laura nudged you and said you were obsessed and you nodded and tried to figure out where the fuck he was playing.

~*~

It changes again, when you survive, at a practice for a recital, Laura waiting impatiently for you, and your family--your _pack--_ doesn’t.

The fire burned hot and fast, and Kate’s smile flashed bright and burning in your mind, a sick gleam in her eyes as she confessed to everything, as Laura shook helpless fury at your side.

She ranted about werewolves, enough that she walked into Eichan and never walked out, but it wasn’t enough.

Your family was dead and she lived and it _wasn’t enough._

The burning in your mark comes later than you expect, when you’re sitting in the dirty motel room Laura rented and you allowed it to sink in--that your family was dead because of you.

Because you let Kate into your heart and your bed and your life.

It burns, three long drips from the moon, like it’s bleeding.

You revel in the pain, and think it’s nowhere near what you deserve.

~*~

He catches your eye as Silent Night winds down, and you twist the melody into The Carol of the Bells. It’s risky and you grin at Stiles’ narrowed eyes, as he follows you through the song, making up far more than you probably should.

The crowd is thicker now, and you know at least one camera is pointed at you, but when you’re like this--when you’re with Stiles, you forget about being recorded. You forget about everything but him and the music.

~*~

You’ve been listening to him play for three weeks, lingering on the subway platform and watching his videos almost obsessively when he finally stalks across the subway station, and jabs you with his bow.

“What the actual fuck, man. Why are you being such a creeper?”

You blink because you don’t know what to say and then you groan, because--

It’s _different_ this time. It doesn’t burn. It spreads like a hot touch, but it’s _good,_ it’s so damn good it makes you hard, makes your eyes roll back and Stiles sways a little, and--

_Oh._

“Shit,” he whispers, staring at you, all wide-eyed and panting.

He shoves his shirt sleeve up and there it is, on his shoulder, in gorgeous color. The mark on your back, the one that reflects you and him, and it’s there, in vibrant blues and subtle greens and he’s staring at you like you’re his whole world.

“Shit,” he says again and you laugh.

“Did you know?” he demands, urgent and you shake your head. Bite your lip and touch the violin on his shoulder.

“I play, too.”

He’s smiling, wide and pleased when you kiss him for the first time.

~*~

You play together and the crowd thins and grows and thins again, but it doesn’t matter, really.

Because you’re with Stiles and he’s playing and smiling at you like you hung the moon, his cheeks flushed with cold and the excitement, and you love him, this man whose written into your skin, who drew you with his beautiful music even before you knew his name.

You feel it, the familiar warmth and Stiles eyes, always on yours, widens just a little as he feels the same telltale echo.

You lower your violin as the song ends and wave at the crowd, taking a good natured bow as you put the instrument away. Stiles is a little slower, talking and cleaning out his case, but you like watching him and he’s vibrating with impatience and nerves when you tuck his scarf around him, into the leather jacket he stole from you.

“What was that, Derek?” he asks, and you shrug, smiling.

You think of the ring in your pocket and the pack you’ve built that loves him, and the stories written into your grandmother’s mark, into your parents and Laura’s and you want that.

You want that with him.

“C’mon, Stiles,” you tug him lightly up the steps, and high above the city the moon beckons. “It’s Christmas Eve. You get to open a present if we get home early enough.”

He eyes you but he doesn’t say anything, just takes your hand, violins banging lightly against your side as you walk and the mark on your back burns bright and warm.


End file.
